


The Immortals

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU, DCU (Movies), DCU Animated
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dick's death, Bruce's life implodes — and he must face down Ra's Al Ghul to try to piece it back together. What lengths will Damian go to, to try to mend what he has broken?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Noontime of Life, I Must Depart

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as a sequel (or possibly an answer) to [this series of panels](http://nolimetangerine.tumblr.com/post/49350591127/bridgemcgidge-kelso895-the-bat-family) from _Injustice: Gods Among us_. To summarize: Dick is dead, and Damian killed him.

"Sir, the detective approaches. He has passed the last gate of the lower tower, and ascends the main steps. Shall we remove him now, sir?"

Ra's Al Ghul simply winced: a small contraction around those ice-light eyes. "No no," he said. "He is quite harmless. Leave him be."

He felt rather than saw the uncertainty in the man's body. Never, by so much as the wayward flick of an eye, would his servants betray uneasiness with a command. And yet, it was asking a great deal of them, to tell them to do nothing as the detective closed in on them. He had known a man in Burma, long centuries ago, who had kept a panther as a pet, and not for any joy the animal brought him, for it brought him none. He had kept it for the joy of other people's fear. "Stand still," he had said to guests. "He will not hurt you." And they had all stood still, and many had made a puddle of shameful wet on the floor as the panther approached, and as its broad wedge of a head nudged their skirts. There was always a faint odor of urine about the door of that man's sitting room, and for this man that had been the smell of joy.

"Prepare my study," Ra's Al Ghul said. "I will receive him there. You need have no concern, he will do no one any harm. He is not capable of it."

He had the samovar readied, and some small poppy cakes. He sat and he waited. It took the detective only twenty minutes to make the ascent — impressive, even in his deteriorated condition. He would be grateful for the fire. At last the great doors of his study swung open, and his attendants stood aside for the detective, as though he were an honored dignitary. Ra's himself rose, because life-long enmity was one thing, but discourtesy quite another. The room was wide and strewn with carpets, and his guest was escorted across it. "Bruce," he said. "I have waited long. Welcome to my home. Please try not to burn this one around me."

Ra's did not embarrass himself or his guest with a false affability, or deceptive charm. So there was no smile to fall from his face when he saw the man: bearded, leaner by far than his muscle mass demanded, hair grown unkempt, the always deep-set eyes now shockingly hollowed. He wore a battered coat, and his bag was slung crosswise about him. He glanced at the tea tray and picked up a cup without a word of greeting, draining it. 

"I took the long road," he said, and the voice that before had skirted the edge of graveled husk was now little more than a rasp. 

"So it is true," Ra's said, considering him. "You have destroyed yourself. Others had said, but I thought to judge for myself. You have come here to die?"

Bruce drained a second cup of tea. "Yes," he said. "Good tea." 

"It is Da Hong Pao. Primary cutting, of course, not secondary. Even the finest teahouses will only serve the secondary, these days. Can you taste the difference?"

"More of a coffee man," Bruce said, replacing his cup. 

"I remember," Ra's said. "I can have some brewed, if you like. Do you wish to stay the night, perhaps meditate with us in the morning, before we attend to our business?"

"You mean, before you kill me?"

"That is what I mean, yes."

"No, this is fine. Here's fine. May I have something first?"

"Anything," Ra's said, and he meant it. Bruce was not of course afraid of death, which had long been his weakness. He required no comfort. But Ra's would do a man facing execution — however just, however long-delayed that execution — the honor of meeting any request, nobly asked. 

"I want five minutes with my son." 

Ra's narrowed his eyes, as if he were considering. He had of course known what the request would be, and that he would grant it. "If I admit him to this room," he said, "I shall insist that he stay in it. It is important that he witness what happens after your conversation."

There was the first flicker of something akin to life in Bruce's eyes. "Ra's," he said. "Don't do that to the boy."

"Not a boy any longer," Ra's corrected. "He left your house a boy, and I have returned him to you a man. He has learned much in the year he has been with me. He has so many of your gifts: your quickness, your agility, your stamina. He has them to a degree that cannot be taught, as do you. But the quality of his mind — that is my beloved Talia. He is the best of both of you. I only wish she could have seen the man he has become." He twitched a finger at the door attendant, who slipped out silently. "But you will see for yourself."

Bruce stood waiting, and Ra's did not offer him the insult of a chair. Like warriors in the lull of a battle they stood. But this was a battle Ra's Al Ghul had finally and forever won, and like all true victories it tasted a bit flat in his mouth. He was still unsure how he would kill the man, and he was weighing whether he should ask. More than likely Bruce would not allow himself a preference. Symmetry demanded the decapitating blade that Bruce himself had refused to wield, all those years ago, but now that the point had come, it felt. . . wrong, somehow. It should be here, in this room, and this setting seemed to call for something more intimate, quieter. A snap of the neck, both hands gripping the head. Yes. That was the direction Ra's was leaning toward. 

The footsteps in the hall were quick and firm. Had he been right not to tell the boy, to warn him? The glance of a second told him he had been: any disturbance was masked before it made it to his face, and the boy's eyes were well-shielded. So young, and such a quick study. That was another way he was like Talia.

"Damian," Bruce said, his voice quickened to life. He was surprised to hear how much life there still was in the man. "Damian."

Damian looked past him. "I came at your command, grandfather. Was there something of importance you wish? I can see no reason of significance why I should have been summoned from my training."

Ra's frowned, or as close as he came to it. A slight lowering of brow, a chilling of stance, but Damian read it as cleverly as he did all else, and saw his mistake at once. He had let his father's voice lash him into resentment and pettiness. Ra's watched the boy rearrange his face, retreat still further. Such a clever, clever boy. "Damian," he said. "Your father has arrived for his execution. He has asked to speak with you."

Damian fixed his gaze on the middle distance. "I am obedient to your command, grandfather."

"Damian," Bruce said, and the voice that had been so dead was low and urgent. Ra's kept his eyes on the boy's face. This would be the test. 

"Damian. I don't ask you to look at me. I don't ask you to speak to me. But I speak now, to the part of you that can still hear me. I failed you. I could not have failed you any worse than I did. In my grief, and in my selfishness, I punished you. I pushed you away from me. I looked at you and saw only death. But listen to me. Listen to me. You are life. You are the truest life of my body, and I love you. What I did, my failure of you, it cannot be forgiven. But you must find a way to do the impossible, as your mother did in her life, as I have done many times. If you do not find a way to forgive my failure, that hatred will become the hard core of you, and you must not let that happen. You are life. Damian. Do you hear me, you are life." 

And he took a step forward, perhaps involuntary, but the attendant nearest had a drawn sword flat on his chest before he moved again. Bruce did not look at it, nor flinch. His voice was a low thrum of intensity. Almost Ra's began to fear it, and he thrilled at the sensation of fear; it had been so long.

"You have been life to me," said Bruce, "life from the moment you came into my house, and becoming your father was the proudest I have ever been. You have brought me only joy, and life, and what happened that terrible day was a mistake. We are not defined by our mistakes. You are not defined by that mistake. It could have been my mistake that killed Dick, and I wish to God it had been, but it could have been anyone's. It does not have to touch the life and the joy that is in you. He loved you. He loved you, and he would not have wanted this for you. I have failed you, but Dick never did. He never failed any of us. You are my son, and I love you. You have been my life, and I give that life back now. Don't touch me again," he said to the attendant whose sword hand had brushed his coat.

"When I'm gone, you must find a way back, away from all this, away from your grandfather. You think now that he is the source of all wisdom and goodness in the universe, and there is much in him that can look like both of those things, even though he doesn't have them. I have loved him too. Even when you leave him, you can still love him. You can do it, because you can do the impossible. You can find a way to love the both of us, even though we have both failed you—him with his hatred, and me with my grief. Damian. Find the way back that I could not find. Do the impossible thing, because you are life, and life always, always does the impossible thing."

"He has done," said Ra's. "Now cut out his tongue."

* * *

For the first few minutes after they saw Dick's body lying still and broken, Clark could hear nothing. He saw things, but they did not make sound, or they did not connect with the sound in his head. 

He did hear, quite distinctly, Bruce's voice. 

"You. . . What did you do?" 

And Damian standing frozen, something coming out of his mouth that Clark could not hear. 

Time splintered, slowed. Other people were saying things, he was sure of it. But he could see only Dick's body and Bruce's shattered face. He heard nothing beyond Bruce's few words, his gasp of. . . it wasn't pain, exactly. It was more like the sound before pain, a shuddering breath before an amputation. 

Sound came back, later that day, in ever-widening circles. Soon he could hear other voices—Dinah's sob, Oliver's whispered "no, no, no," Wally's sputter of incomprehension, Diana's growl of anger, as though death were another enemy to be fought. And later, back at Wayne Manor, he could hear everything in the house by then. He was sorry he could, by that time. He felt jealous of the others, that they could stand around and not hear what he could hear.

By early evening, Alfred pulled him aside. "Mr. Kent," he said wearily. The old man had aged twenty years in a day. Clark reached a hand to support him, but Alfred would not have it. "Mr. Kent," he said, "I am afraid I need your help."

"Of course," Clark said. "Anything."

"Master Bruce is below."

"I know," he said.

"He will not. . . listen to me."

"He won't release the body," Clark said grimly. "I was afraid of that."

Alfred nodded. Clark considered saying more, but instead just went to do the job that needed to be done. The cave was dark, all monitors off, and there was only blackness. His eyes could see without any difficulty, but to Bruce it must be thick as pitch down here. Bruce was sitting in the chair before the monitors, like Clark had seen him a thousand million times before. It was like it always was, except for the atrocity draped across Bruce, except for what he held wrapped in his arms. 

Clark knelt there, on the damp stone, and said things he had no memory of later. He said everything, and nothing. He pleaded, he comforted, he explained, he cajoled. It was all just words. He just needed Bruce to hear his voice. He told the story of when he had first learned who Kal-El of Krypton was, and how that knowledge was wedded with the grief, and how love and loss were inextricable. He told the story of when Dick was eleven and decided to take the Batwing out for a little spin, and how he had called Clark in a panic when he realized he had figured out take-off but not landing, and maybe mid-air was not the place to have had that realization, and Clark had had to come rescue both him and the plane, and get them both safely back to the cave before Bruce ever found out, and how a tearful Dick had made him swear never, _ever_ to tell. He reached a tentative hand to Dick's hair at that.

"Guess I just broke my promise," he whispered, but Bruce was suddenly awake and aware. 

"Don't touch him," came the snarl, and Dick was jerked away, out of his reach. Clark closed his eyes, and began all over again. It was nearing morning, by his calculations, when he heard a step on the stairs. _Please God no_ , he thought, but it was, of course it was.

"Father," came the quavering voice, and Clark stood quickly. He didn't know what Damian could see, but he would not have it be this. 

"Damian, go back upstairs. Tell Alfred we'll be up in a bit. Please just go—"

"Father," and the boy was pushing past him, trying to get closer. Thank God for the blackness. "Please. I'm so sorry, I don't know why I—please, Father, I'm so sorry, so so sorry. . ." Clark could hear the choke of the sob that closed his throat. He wanted to reach out and pull Damian back, but then he saw something stir in Bruce, some spark of awareness, some. . . something. 

"Damian," he said, and his voice sounded rusty and unused, like it had been much longer than twelve hours since he had used it. 

Damian knelt beside him. "I'm here, Father. Please, please, I'm so sorry, I never meant—"

"Get _out_."

Clark put a hand on Damian's shoulder. "Go back upstairs, son," he said. "Your dad and I need to talk a bit more. We—"

"Get out." Bruce was rising now, struggling up, still clutching Dick's body. "Get out of this house. Get out. I have tried for years to teach you. I have tried to make you better than the poison of your mother's blood. I have failed. You will never be anything but the demon's child. You are only destruction, and death. And I took you into my house. I took you into my son's house."

" _Bruce_ ," Clark said loudly. His only thought was to make him stop talking, to shut him up. "Damian, _go_ , please let me handle—"

"You are death," Bruce snarled. "Hasn't death done enough here?"

Clark put both hands on Damian's shoulders and felt the shaking. He pulled the boy closer to him. "Fa—Father," he said, in a small broken voice. 

"Damian, listen to me," Clark said, putting his body between Bruce and the boy, a hand on the boy's face. "Listen. You need to go back upstairs right now. Your dad is saying a lot of things he doesn't mean, and you don't need to be here. Please let me help him. Please let me—"

"Shut up, Clark," Bruce said. "Stop coddling him." And Bruce was rising. He was moving toward Damian. "Come look," he said. "Come see what death looks like. Here," he said, and before Clark could stop him he had lifted Dick's body, all one hundred eighty pounds of it, and laid it in the boy's terrified, trembling arms, too much weight, the boy would fall. Dick's head was lolling backward, his hair still damp.

" _Christ_ , Bruce," Clark said. He shoved him back, hard. He seized the body from Damian's shaking arms, walked it to the platform and laid it on the med table. His own arms were shaking, because _Dick Dick Dick_. He allowed himself one embrace, one press of a kiss to that chilly forehead, one comb of his fingers through that thick dark hair. He could hear the choke of Damian's breath as he tried not to sob. 

He pulled the boy into his arms. "It will be all right," he said, and he heard the soft air of Bruce's snort, even if Damian did not.

"Don't you ever get tired of the sound of your own lies," Bruce said, and then _no no no_ he was pressing a palm to the light control and the cave was flooded with dim green half-light. _God damn you Bruce_ , he wanted to cry, because in that light Dick's body was all Damian could see now, and the boy's shudders became spasms that wracked him. It was how untouched Dick looked, how unwounded. If he had been covered in scars, if he had been bleeding, the whole thing might have seemed possible, instead of the mistake, the wrongness of Dick Grayson in all his strength and beauty lying stretched unmoving on that metal slab. Only one small tell: a round purplish blossom on the right temple. 

"Let the boy look," Bruce was saying. "Let Death take a look at his work. Now go on. Go tell your grandfather you did his work for him." 

And he pulled his cowl off for the first time, tossed it carelessly aside. The gloves followed, and he trod on them. "Bruce," Clark said through gritted teeth. "Bruce, dammit, don't you walk away from here. Your son needs you."

Bruce's eyes were blank, and they moved over Clark and Damian like they weren't even there. "My son is dead," he said. He was heading to the stairs, leaving Clark alone with the sobbing boy and the dead one.

And after an hour of holding Damian while he retched tears and shook, Clark was pretty sure he had made the wrong choice, all those hours ago, when he had chosen to sit here in the dark and try to plead reason into Bruce Wayne. He should have just punched him into the far wall. He should have just taken Dick's body by force hours ago. It was what Batman would have done. 

But he wasn't finished with the wrong choices, evidently. Because when Damian at last slept, Clark had carried him upstairs and laid him in one of the first-floor guest rooms. It was a room he knew well. It was the room Alfred always put him in, when he visited the Manor. As far as Alfred knew, that was where he stayed, too. And then Clark chose to go in search of Bruce, which was of course pointless, because when Bruce didn't want to be found, there wasn't a force on earth that could find him. But Clark chose to do it: chose to leave Damian alone, in Alfred's care, with Dick's body stretched out in the Batcave. Chose to do it, because he would always, always go in search of Bruce.

He hadn't found him, of course. He never did find out where Bruce had been, in those hours. But it didn't matter, because it had been enough time: enough time for Damian to wake in a dawn-quiet house. Enough time for him to go downstairs, back to the Batcave. And what had he thought, Clark wondered, when he woke and remembered his brother's death, his father's curses, his whole world's destruction? Had he even thought at all, or had he been acting on pure instinct, all the grief and confusion and rage bottled inside his skin erupting into vicious, uncontrollable flame? 

That was how Clark had found Bruce, at last. Because he had seen the smoke from the Manor the minute he had flown back near Gotham, over the bay, and he had known, he had known what he would find. There was Bruce, standing calmly on the lawn. There was what looked like every fire truck in Gotham, battling the blaze. Clark landed on a knoll near where Bruce and Alfred stood watching. Bruce's face looked like he was watching a horticultural show. 

"They've got it under control," he said to Clark. "The southeast corner is gone, but that's to be expected. It won't spread beyond that."

"Alfred," said Clark, and the older man with the hollow eyes and the soot-streaked face looked at him. "Alfred, my God, where's Damian?"

"Gone," Bruce answered. "Along with the Batwing, of course."

Alfred mopped at his face with a sweat-stained handkerchief. "I should have known what he would do," he said, his voice broken. "I should have—I should never have let myself sleep. I heard the plane take off but it was too late, I should have been more—I should have—"

"He burned the cave," Clark murmured, stunned, and then—God. It hadn't even occurred to him, he hadn't thought. Jesus. Bruce answered his unspoken question.

"Quite the funeral pyre for Dick, isn't it," Bruce mused. "Well. No Al Ghul ever did things by halves, I'll say that for them. No, it's better this way, he was right." The breeze carried the sweet smoky scent of ruin their direction, and flecks of gray dust, black soot, and orange ash came floating through the air. "Let Dick go back to the wind. He never should have been underground anyway." And he wandered off, coat flapping in the light afternoon breeze, hands in his pockets.

Dick's funeral—memorial service, rather—was held in the Wayne family cemetery. Bruce had apparently roused himself from his numbness long enough to design the headstone, which was more of a monument: a pillar, right in the center of the plot. _Richard John Grayson_ , it said on the base, and the dates. At the top of the pillar, on all four sides of the little plinth, the Nightwing symbol was carved. And below that, in the largest letters: _Beloved Son_. Standing in that bleak little plot, Clark wondered if Jason had ever seen his own headstone, before Bruce had had it removed. _Ally and Friend_ , that one had read. He hoped Jason had never seen it, so that he wouldn't have it to compare to this. But Jason's face looked as numb as everyone else's, just as beyond caring. The day was windy, and the yellow tarps covering the shell of the southeast wing flapped in the breeze; you could hear them from the graveyard. The air still smelled sticky-sweet and ashy. 

"For none of us liveth to himself," intoned the old priest with the kindly face, "and no man dieth to himself. For if we live, we live unto the Lord, and if we die, we die unto the Lord." The pages of his prayer book whipped in the wind, making it hard for him to keep his place. Clark wondered if this was the priest who had buried Thomas and Martha Wayne. The Wayne family pew at St. Bartholomew's was certainly big enough to merit a couple of priests on retainer, but the last time Bruce had darkened the door of a church, he had probably been in grade school.

"Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints," he continued, and the sad little knot of people fumbled with their service leaflets to make the response.

" _Where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting_ ," they managed. There was a kind of comfort in the sonorous ancient words. Clark looked up, past the gaping broken mouth of the southeast wing, to the windows of the west side. He wondered if Bruce was watching. 

"You have to come," he had said, the night before. "Bruce. Please. You can't not be there."

Bruce had just poured himself another whisky and watched the twilight settle on the grounds. "Is there some reason," he said at last, "that you are the appointed person to keep having these little chats with me, or did you elect yourself?"

"Jason and Tim—"

"Will be better off the farther away from me they stay."

"Bruce, please look at me."

And he had obliged, turning from the window. There was nothing on his face. "Bruce," Clark tried. "Dick would not want you to—"

"That's enough, I think," Bruce said, like he was refusing seconds at the dinner table. "Try to understand this. You've been in my bed more times than I can count, and there is no denying you are an excellent fuck. But at any time, by word or deed, did I invite you to think it was more than that?"

Clark stilled his breathing. "Haven't you had enough yet," he said, but he didn't have breath for the question mark. "Haven't you had enough of saying unspeakable things to people who care about you."

"I'm getting a little tired of the way you talk to me. You weren't in my bed in the first place for the quality of your conversation, and sucking my cock, no matter how excellently well you manage it, does not give you rights over me. I will do as I please, when I please, where I please, and I will come and go as I see fit. Now get out."

"I guess not," Clark said. He stopped at the door on his way out. There was more he wanted to say, more he could say, but it wouldn't be heard, so he settled for the only thing left to say. "Good-bye, Bruce." The man at the window did not so much as raise his glass in gesture of farewell. 

"Should we go up to the house?" Diana whispered to him now, in the graveyard. The ceremony was over, but everyone was still milling about, talking in hushed voices. 

"Sure," he said. "I think Alfred has a lunch prepared, something like that. Don't look for Bruce, though."

"I wasn't," she said, with that downward tilt of her mouth. "You coming?"

"No," he said. "I have to get back to the office." And he made his solitary way back to his car, leaving Diana standing there looking after him. He couldn't explain to her. Even for Alfred, he wouldn't walk into that house of death again.


	2. Then Answered The Lord Unto Job Out Of The Whirlwind

Wally West bounced on his heels a little, at the doorstep of Wayne Manor. He rang the doorbell again, but in the vastness of those stone walls, he couldn't hear anything. Maybe it wasn't even connected. 

He went down the front steps and looked around. Maybe he could manage to peer in one of the ground floor windows? Of course, he'd probably get some laser-beam X-ray mach-three arrow through his forehead, if the Rottweilers didn't rip off his ankles first. He didn't have any doubt Wayne Manor was probably equipped with meta-Rottweilers who could outrun the Flash, and who were trained to dine only on human testicle. 

"Hello?" He tried the big brass knocker on the door — at least, he thought that was what it was, but maybe it was the lever for the trap door about to open beneath his feet. He banged it three times, hard. The narrow glass on either side of the door was thick and wavy, the old type of glass that was hard to see through. 

"Maybe. . . maybe you could come with me, to help out," he had said to Jason day before yesterday, and Jason had just looked at him. Or at least, he thought Jason had looked at him. Not once, in the whole conversation, had he taken off that stupid red mask. "Bruce, he's—he's in a bad way," Wally had tried. Jason had made some noise under the mask that might have been a snort of contempt, or maybe he was just clearing his throat.

"My heart fucking bleeds," Jason said. "Fucking Waynes. Leave me to die, and murder Dick? Sure, I'll help out, if by 'help out' you mean 'hunt them down and slice open their motherfucking throats.' Because in that case, you bet, I'm your man.'"

"I just thought, if maybe some of us who knew Dick best, who loved him best—"

Jason had whipped around at that, and was in his face. "Don't you presume to know anything about me," he had snarled. "Don't you dare to think you know what I feel."

"I know what Dick felt," he said. "And I know that Bruce needs you now."

"Bruce." He practically spat the name. "Bruce needs other people like an Amazon needs cock. Fuck off and leave me alone."

"I think if you just—okay, fine," he had sighed, because Jason had disappeared, vaulting over the side of a building with an echo of Dick's acrobatic grace, and for a minute Wally had just watched him go, because it reminded him of Dick so painfully much. He hadn't really pinned his hopes on Jason. But he had thought he would try there first, because he felt sure that Tim would not tell him no. Tim was a sure thing. Tim was the most level-headed of the Batclan, aside from Dick, of course.

"You're telling me no?" he had asked Tim incredulously.

Tim had shrugged. "I'm just saying, I already tried that. I tried it weeks ago, several times. What, you thought I was just going to ignore the fact Bruce was completely self-destructing? But he doesn't want to listen to anything I have to say."

"Yeah, but if we went together—"

Tim shook his head. Apologetically, ruefully, but it was still a shake of his head. "I'm sorry, man, I'm not trying to be hard on you. But the last time I tried, Bruce, he—he just said some things I'd rather not have to deal with again. Honestly, I can't see having anything more to do with him right now. Maybe you don't know what he can be like, but I do."

That much was probably true, Wally had acknowledged. He was thinking about what Tim had said now, standing here on the doorstep. Every reason this was a Bad Idea, maybe one of his all-time winners, was playing through his head when he heard the swoosh of that vast door opening on its hinges. 

"Hey! I was looking for. . ." petered out on his lips when he realized it actually was Bruce Wayne who had answered the door. The door was left hanging open, and the dark figure shuffled back to the shadows of the entrance hall and up the stairs. "Um, hey," Wally tried again. "Are you—okay. I'll just. . . follow you then? So, no Alfred, huh?" He caught up to him on the stairs. "That's cool, I guess even butlers need a vacation, huh, it must be a hard life of. . . opening doors and whatnot."

They were on the second floor, and Wally tried to look around without making it _look_ like he was looking around, but oh man. This place. "Hey, so, when you were a kid, did you ever roller blade down this hall? I mean, if someone had tried to tell me 'no skating down the hundred-foot-long marble hallway' I'da been all—" 

He subsided at a glare from Bruce. He didn't subside just because it was a glare from Bruce, though those were intimidating enough, and the cowl had sort of acted as a low-intensity radiation shield; the glare without the cowl was bowel-loosening. He went quiet because he actually got a look at Bruce's face, and he had not been prepared for what he would see. Sure, a beard, every guy's gonna try that now and again, though it was a bit of a shock to see one on that knife-sharp jaw. The weight loss was more unsettling, though the clothes masked it a bit—and what the hell was he wearing, anyway? Another time and place he would have said, hey, Bats is just hanging out, about to do some extreme power yoga, but he couldn't avoid the idea that Bruce had just answered the door in his pyjamas. And that thing wrapped around him, it might be embroidered silk, but it was definitely a bathrobe. 

Bruce was leading him into a wide-windowed sitting room that looked out on the back lawns. There was next to no furniture in it, but a couple of comfortable chairs. Bruce sank into one facing the windows, and gestured at another one for Wally. Wally licked his lips, tried to arrange his words. Bruce was pouring himself a drink.

"Wow," Wally said, aware of how loud his voice sounded in the near-empty room. "That's gotta be convenient, huh, having your whole bottle of JD right on the table beside your chair, with a glass lined up and everything."

The glare became bloodcurdling. Silently Bruce turned the label. "Glenfiddich 1937," he said. "Go ahead, say what Clark sent you to say."

Wally frowned. "I didn't—I mean, he didn't tell me to say anything. He doesn't know I'm here."

Bruce arched a skeptical brow over the rim of his drink. "Is that so."

"Yeah, it actually is. It's, ah, it's been a long six months. We've—we've all missed you, at the Watchtower. Batman was—well, we sure coulda used him around, when the Gordanians finally got through our defensive perimeter. I mean, the Thanagarians weren't lying about everything, those guys are not messing around. We almost had our asses handed to us."

"Looks like you did fine." He was savoring the whiskey, studying the window. 

"We didn't, as a matter of fact." Wally clenched his jaw. "Not—that fine, as it turns out. We lost Booster Gold."

Bruce turned to look at him. "Who?" he said. 

"Fuck you," Wally said, before he had known he was going to say it, and Bruce chuckled. "There's Wally," he said. 

"Yeah? Well, where the hell's Batman, that's what I'd like to know. That's what the whole League would like to know, and all the people who died during the Gordanian incursion who maybe wouldn't have had to, if our strategic co-ordinator had been—" he stopped, because he didn't know how to say it, and because the memories were still too painful. They had been leaderless, rudderless. Raw power and not much else, and sure, Clark and Diana were stepping up and leading the team, and it was great, they were great, but they didn't—they weren't—no one saw the big picture like Bruce always had, no one had his finger on the whole keyboard like Bruce did. Things were getting missed. 

"You think you're the only one," he said, looking at the parquet between his feet. "You think you're the only one, who misses him, who can't wake up in the morning without. . ." He shook his head. "He was my best friend," he whispered. 

There was only the sound of the liquid in the glass. Jesus, Bruce could knock it back. "I know that," said the rough voice, and for half a second there it sounded like Bruce again. "That's why I opened the door." 

Wally nodded, not trusting himself past the knot in his throat. He would think it was fine, think he was over the weeks and weeks where it would hit him in the middle of the day and he would have to crawl into a closet or lock himself in a bathroom and sob until it tore his insides, hammer the wall and stuff a towel in his mouth and scream. Being here made all that worse. This was where Dick had grown up; these were the rooms, the halls he had known. He thought of the burned part of the house, and the tarps that still flapped in the breeze, covering it. He wondered if that was where Dick's room had been. 

He got up and walked to the window, to have something to do and look at to help shove down the iron fingers strangling his throat. It was beautiful, all that wide green sloping to the river, all those massive old trees. He could see a corner of the graveyard, off to the south. He wondered if that was why Bruce sat in this room. The thought of that made him angry. 

"The rest of us didn't get to do this," he said, his hands shoved deep in his jeans. "We didn't get to retreat to our palaces and cry like pretty pretty princesses. We had to go save the world."

"You can only save the world if you care about the world," Bruce said. "Even if I had the equipment and resources to re-create Batman—which, by the way, I don't—I still wouldn't be any good to the League. I'd be a danger. You have to have something to care about, to do that kind of job."

"So. . . that was it? Dick was all you cared about?"

Bruce rubbed his jaw absently. "Apparently," he said. 

"I don't—I can't believe that's true."

"Believe whatever you want. But I don't belong with the League anymore. Believe that much, for your own good."

"Oh," said Wally. "Okay. I see. So, your abandoning us, it's really about you looking after us, that's really just your way of being responsible, right? And it's got nothing to do with the fact that you're spending ninety percent of your time high as a fucking kite, does it?" And off the table near the window piled with books and used ashtrays and out-of-date newspapers he snatched the glass syringe, and the small blue rubber tie. "Jesus fuck, Bruce." 

He had known when he had seen Bruce's eyes in the light of the hallway earlier, because he had seen that particular quality of red rim to the lower lid that telegraphed not just sleeplessness, not just alcohol, and not just grief, but something else. He had recognized it. "You're using," he said, incredulously. " _You_ , of all people." The black leather needle case rested next to a silver-framed photograph, and in the picture was a laughing dark-haired woman, with cheekbones he recognized. "Wow," he said. "Just wow. You know, I haven't always been the cleanest person in the world, I'll admit it. For a while there, anything that would just make the world slow the fuck _down_ , you know? But I have to tell you, even I never had the balls to shoot up in my parents' house." 

Bruce didn't give an answer to that, but Wally could see those eyes narrow. Six months ago, he would have had the good sense to be afraid. "After everything you spent your life doing," he said. "All the drug dealers you locked up and got off the streets, hell, whole crime syndicates you took down, and now this is what you do? What exactly do you think Dick would say to this, what would he say to all of this, to—"

"Are you finished?" The poison-edged knife of that voice cut across him. "Have you said everything you were supposed to say now? Then go on. Run back to Clark and tell him you did your job."

"Why do you keep talking about Clark, why do you keep thinking he sent me here? Why can't it just be the truth, which is that I was the one who was worried? He's the one who told me not to bother. He said not to come. I said no, I was Dick's friend, he'll talk to me. It wasn't Clark, it was _me_."

Bruce was just studying him, and Wally knew he wouldn't take it any further. Even drunk and strung-out, Bruce wasn't going to cop to why he kept coming back to the subject of Clark. Back in the day—before the last six months—that had been quite the mental image for him, knowing that Bruce and Clark, after a hard day's work saving the world, ripped each other's clothes off and fucked each other till they screamed. It sure made mission briefings go faster, to think about that one. Once, J'onn had turned from where he sat beside him and gave him a pointed glare, and Wally had shrugged with an embarrassed grin, making a mental note not to sit next to the telepath next time. Even J'onn couldn't avoid hearing fantasies that were _that_ loud. 

_Come on, I know you're a hell of a lot straighter than me, but even YOU have to see why that's hot_ , he had said to Dick, who had just laughed and slapped him on the back. _Put it in the wank bank, my friend_ , he had said. Wally had groaned. _If that were actual money, I'd be richer than Bruce_. Dick had thrown back his handsome head and laughed even louder, reaching a hand around to ruffle his friend's carrot mop. Dick, God, _Dick_.

Wally set the syringe back down on the table. _It won't do any good, going out there_ , Clark had said. _You need to know that_. Wally had shrugged. _Maybe, but it can't hurt, right?_ Clark had looked at him with concern, in that way Clark had of looking right through you, in every sense of the word. _Won't hurt him_ , Clark had said gravely. 

"Forget it," Wally said, suddenly weary. "Just forget it. I don't know what the hell I thought I was doing, coming out here. You're right. You know what? You're right. You just stay here doing whatever the hell you're doing, killing yourself or whatever, though I don't get that, there are a hell of a lot of ways to do it faster than this. But whatever. But don't you goddamn dare to say you're doing this because of Dick, don't you dare do that. You think this honors him, you think this is what he would want? Because if he could see you now he'd be nothing but _ashamed_ of you, you're a disgrace to Dick, you're a disgrace to your parents, and you're a dis—"

 _Smack_ went his back against the wall. He coughed for breath, because the impact had knocked the air from his lungs for a second there. Even drunk and deteriorated, Bruce had serious weight over him, and there was enough of Batman's iron strength in the grip on his collar to leave him gasping. "You're done here," husked that voice, right in his ear. Wally struggled. Bruce knew just how to hold him to make sure he didn't have enough leverage to vibrate out. 

"Says you," he gasped.

"Says me," said Bruce, and then Wally felt the slick chill circle against his temple. The rest of the air left his body in a rush. 

"You. You brought a _gun_. In _this_ house, you brought a gun." 

Bruce released him. Wally dropped to the floor, rubbing his neck. Bruce waved him away with his pistol hand. "Get out."

He couldn't get to the door fast enough, but he wouldn't look like he was running. He had promised himself before he came here: no powers, no speed. Bruce was just standing there, looking at the spot on the wall where Wally had been like there was something there he hadn't seen before. Too bad it wasn't a fucking mirror. And then, because Wally had never, not once, left well enough alone: "You wanna kill yourself, fine. Use whatever you want to do it. But keep that gun out of other people's faces, and try aiming it at the person you bought it for."

Bruce looked at him then, and there was the first thing in his face that looked like Bruce, that looked _alive_ , that Wally had seen all afternoon. He looked like Wally had actually said something interesting. Wally wrenched the sitting room door open and slammed it behind him. 

He sat in his car afterwards, once he had driven safely off the grounds, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyesockets, trying to push back the tears. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_. "Okay, Dick," he said aloud. "Okay. Fuck. I think I may have fucked up really a lot. I think I may have just recommended to your alcoholic druggie suicidal dad that he actually go ahead and kill himself." 

_Oh my God_ , Clark would say. _No, no, no, dear God, no!_ He saw him kneeling beside Bruce's lifeless body. He heard the sobs of the whole Justice League. He saw Clark pulling a note out of Bruce's cold stiff hand. _He left a note!_ And everyone would fall silent in horrified anticipation. _It says here. . . It says, Wally told me to go ahead and do it._ And the whole Justice League would turn to look at him. He saw Hawkgirl lifting her mace to swing at his head. 

He banged his head repeatedly into the steering wheel, because maybe if he went ahead and concussed right now, the League would feel sorry for him. Maybe they would at least give him a sedative before Wonder Woman beat the ever-living shit out of him.

* * *

"Hey, Kent!" Toby from Human Resources was up on their floor, because no one ever brought the good doughnuts to Human Resources. "Hey Kent, some guy's here to see you!" There was a dusting of powdered sugar in the corner of Toby's mouth, and a smear of what looked suspiciously like raspberry filling. There had only been one raspberry-filled left, when he had last checked. 

Toby must have caught his glare. "Were you saving this?" He lifted the half-eaten doughnut, still chewing. 

"Forget it," Clark sighed. "Is it the guy from archives?"

Toby looked over top of the bullpen. He was leaning against the filing cabinet by Amalia's desk, and had a better view of the waiting area than Clark did, from his desk. The waiting area was always crowded with people — deliveries to all the floors, mail clerks, sweaty guys from IT trying to take the shortcut to third floor. Toby squinted. "Don't know," he said. "Is the guy from archives homeless?"

Clark looked over his glasses. "Probably. I mean, we do work at a newspaper."

"Too true. More than likely we're all gonna be homeless before the next fiscal quarter."

Clark rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. "Can you do me a favor, just tell him I'm out? I've got about forty-five minutes to finish this."

"When'd you start?"

"About five minutes from now. Just, go get rid of him, all right? Please?"

Toby squinted at him, and Clark stared pointedly at the doughnut. Toby brushed his hands of powdered sugar and sighed. "Sure, sure," he said. "Happy to be your errand boy." He came back a few minutes later. "Homeless guy's not buying. He said he had to see you and no one else. I'm telling you, Kent, the homeless ain't like they used to be."

"Great," said Clark, and went back to his article notes. He had the whole thing done and e-mailed to Perry in forty-seven minutes but he had no doubt Perry would make him feel those extra two minutes come next story meeting. Toby came by and plopped on his desk with, no fooling, a plate of leftover homemade banana bread from accounting. Cherisse was going through a bad break-up, and accounting was living large. 

"Want some?"

"Nope." Clark breathed the breath of the righteous, enjoying the clean moral air of inbox zero. 

"You know your guy's still out there, right?"

Clark brought his feet down with a thud. "Oh you're kidding me. I completely forgot. Really, he's still there?"

Toby craned his body around. "Yep. Persistent, huh. I'm telling you, it's the new homeless. Punctual, insistent, obnoxious. You know why? Because they all used to be newspaper execs, that's why. It's our future we're staring in the face, my friend."

"Thanks Tobe, you're an inspiration." But he got up to go peer into the waiting area, because homeless or not (and he wasn't exactly trusting Toby's judgment on that one) he wasn't intentionally going to leave someone cooling his heels for close to an hour. The waiting area was just as crowded as an hour ago, if not more so, and a lot of that was because the north elevator was broken past the fourth floor, which made their floor the de facto mezzanine for the whole building right now. Clark peered through the crush of arguing bodies to find the scruffiest one. Sitting in a chair against the wall, dirty hoodie over his face, billed cap shadowing his dark beard. 

Holy Christ. 

Bruce's eyes met his. Clark pushed through the people, trying not to hurt anyone, but really he just wanted to pick them all up and punt them out the window as he waded through the press. Bruce rose. He hadn't needed to see his face to know it was him; no one else held his body like that, with that preternatural stillness. 

"Going a little incognito?" Clark said lightly, but his chest was hammering. He scanned Bruce's face, his eyes, and staring back at him was only Bruce. His eyes looked tired, but they were his eyes. 

"Something like that. Do you have a minute?"

"Of course, yes, sure. I mean, obviously. I'm sorry, if I had known—"

"It's all right, I had no place to be. You're the one with the job."

Clark had maneuvered them into the corner of the room, by the windows, and he noticed Bruce checking his sightlines, angling himself in the corner. Some habits were impossible to break. "I haven't heard from you in a while," Clark said, because he couldn't think of anything to say. People milling about, but his world had narrowed to just these three feet of space.

"I took a little vacation," Bruce said. "I left to get clean, actually. Figured it wasn't going to happen in that house." 

"Oh," Clark said. "That's—I'm glad. Good."

"Yeah. Wally came to see me, a few months ago. Smart kid."

"That he is. Bruce. How are you, really?"

"Alive," he said, with a downward quirk to his mouth, and some part of Clark clutched at it, it was so like Bruce. "For now, anyway. Listen, I need to go away for a while."

"But—I thought you said you just came back."

"I did. But I have to go find Damian. I've done all the searching I can without actually getting out there myself. Being able to remote access the Watchtower's system was helpful, and it's given me a few leads I can follow, so thank you for not changing my passcodes."

"I would never," Clark said softy. "I wouldn't have done that."

"I don't know why the hell not."

"Sure you do."

That silenced him. He adjusted his cap, tugged at it. "Listen," he said. "Before I go. I need you to know something. When last we spoke, I said some things that were not true. In fact, they were. . . the opposite of true."

Clark let that rest in the silence between them. He weighed and rejected any number of possible responses. "You never met my uncle Philip," Bruce continued. "I stayed with them the first year after my parents died. Him, his wife, his kids."

"You have cousins?"

"Somewhere," Bruce said, with a slight squint out the window, like he might have misplaced them. "Anyway, he was not a bad guy. But after a year they sent me back to the Manor to live with Alfred, mainly because they couldn't find any boarding schools for fourth-graders."

Clark hid his smile. "Not for want of looking, I'll bet. What happened?"

"Nothing, really. I don't remember any one particular incident. They might tell it differently. I was just a very angry little kid. I think they were prepared to deal with a sad little kid, a scared little kid. They weren't prepared to deal with a mean, angry little kid who said horrible things to guests at dinner parties and sliced open his cousins' dolls and fed the stuffing to the ponies." He winced. "So maybe I do remember one or two incidents."

Clark didn't bother hiding his smile this time. "I take your point," he said, and "Do you?" said Bruce, very intently, as though he had somehow actually made one, and Clark knew Bruce believed he had said very clearly, _Dick's death awakened every abandonment terror in me I thought long laid to rest, and in my panic and in my terror I did the only thing I've ever known to do, which is to destroy anyone who could possibly ever abandon me, and finally myself_. But instead, he had told this story about his uncle and the ponies, and Clark had understood it, because this was what communicating with Bruce looked like. 

"Where will you start?" Clark asked.

"Like I said, I have a couple of leads. But I think I know where I'll end up."

"You think he went back to Ra's Al Ghul."

"I do. I'm betting that's where your trails went cold when you went looking."

Clark acknowledged that with a nod. "What makes you think you'll succeed where I didn't?"

Both Bruce's eyebrows raised at that, and instead of smiling Clark wanted to laugh, because it was so perfectly Bruce, and the beard and the scruffy clothes made absolutely no difference — when those lordly eyebrows were raised at you, you damn well shifted your feet and looked at the floor. "So do you have a plan for getting to Ra's?"

"I do. I go up to the front door and ask to talk to my son."

There was nothing in him that thought Bruce was kidding. "Your plan could use some work. Bruce. Seriously. You can't go near Ra's Al Ghul. We'll find another way to get to Damian."

"And if there is no other way?" Bruce's gaze was level. "If at the end of the day, Ra's has him behind fortress walls that even I can't get through, then that is what I will have to do. Ra's won't refuse me."

"No, he won't," admitted Clark. "But he will also kill you."

"Yes. He will. But that may be the price I have to pay for my son. I've lost one of my sons. I'm not going to lose another. I need to know you understand that."

"When are you leaving," he said, instead of the nine million things screaming to be said.

"Right now. This afternoon. This was my last stop." And Bruce extended his hand. Clark took it and could not, could not let go. He kept moving their joined hands, slowly, in some semblance of a shake, but he could not let go.

"You'll remember what I said," Bruce said. "The opposite of true." Clark put his other hand on Bruce's arm, and squeezed his hand now, he didn't care if it was hurting. They were just two men in a crowded room, huddled too close, locked in a strange conversation. It had been so long since he had touched Bruce, and even just to grasp his warm solid hand like this was electric. 

"I won't see you again," he said, discovering it was true as he said it.

"Probably not." Bruce's hand was squeezing his back now. Their arms were shaking with the not-letting-go of it. 

"Don't ask me to let you walk out of this building."

"I am asking you to let me walk out of this building."

Clark groaned almost with the pain of that, and spreading his fingers to release Bruce's hand took every ounce of will he did not know he possessed. "Hey Smallville, phone's for you," called Lois's voice across the bullpen. Someone shoved into him from behind. 

"Better take that," said Bruce.

"Wait." Clark held his hand up. "Just wait, will you please wait? It's a contact, I have to take this, tell me you will be here when I turn around."

"I will be here when you turn around." 

Clark vaulted over the low gate separating the waiting area from the bullpen, grabbed the phone, spoke at probably twice the speed of sound to the very confused woman on the other end, and raced back to where Bruce was still standing. In all the jostling, somehow no one jostled into Bruce. It was like he emitted a forcefield from his body, as though his body's presence extended through the molecules of air around him. He wondered if Ra's had taught him that, or if that had been Bruce at a heartbreaking nine years old. 

Clark would not touch him again; neither of them could have borne that. He just put a hand on the weathered canvas bag Bruce had slung over his shoulder. A casual, friendly gesture of farewell. "Write when you get work," he said, and Bruce's smile quirked his mouth. And then he was gone, slipping out the stream of people as noiselessly as he had come in, to the stairs. Clark watched the hoodie for as long as he could see it.

"Swedish meatballs," called Toby from the other side of the bullpen, pointing enthusiastically to a paper plate he was hoisting into the air. Clark stretched his face in a smile he was pretty sure he would never actually feel again.


	3. O Absalom, My Son, My Son

"Hold him still," said Ra's. Two attendants secured his arms on either side. He did not resist. Ra's pressed a button on his desk, and a narrow drawer slid open. He palmed a small glittering scimitar. A third attendant grabbed the lower half of Bruce's face, but for half a moment he wrenched his jaw free.

"Damian, go," he said. "Get out of here, _go!_ " Then the fingers pressed hard enough to make him gasp, forcing open his mouth, and he knew he would not speak again. _Run, Damian, go, get far from here_ , he pleaded in his head.

"Grandfather," said Damian's voice. There was in it something, some tiny spark, of what sounded like his son. Maybe, maybe it had been enough. Even if it were just the smallest seed. Even if it bore fruit years and years from now, all the blood spilled on this carpet would be worth it and more. _My son, my son Damian_. That was from somewhere, caught some echo of something he had once known or should know, but his brain was overloading now, shutting down non-essential parts in order to prepare for the pain to come, and for the gauntlet of the next few minutes. He could rest soon enough. Soon enough there would be nothing. 

Ra's was in his face now, inches from him. A thumb like tempered steel was pressing on his cheek. His jaw was pulled lower, and Bruce went slack, let his eyes slide shut. "You thought to turn him," said Ra's, in a purr near his ear. "You thought to turn my own blood against me. You see now it cannot be done." The thumb rubbed a painful circle. 

"Do you know what Marc Antony did with the tongue of Cicero, who had spoken so eloquently against him? Eloquently, but deludedly; Cicero's age and time were over, finished. Antony saw this. He nailed Cicero's tongue to the door of the Senate house, as a warning for all to see. Tell me, Bruce. To whom shall I send your tongue? To which of your friends, as a gift?"

"They are—hard—to shop for," Bruce ground out, and the attendant behind him reached around and swung a small weighted hand mace at his groin, as the price of his insolence. Bruce's knees gave, and pain swallowed him, cold and white. Ra's hauled him up. 

"Then tell me this. Would you know the depth of your failure? Would you stare your futility in the face before you die?" 

He didn't have breath for the answer this time. "Bring us the prisoner," said Ra's. "Go on. He has been waiting long enough." He waved a finger at some attendants in the back. 

"I thought to bring our prisoner in after I had removed your tongue, for the justice of watching you unable to speak to him," Ra's was saying. "But I may have misjudged. Your blood loss will be severe, possibly fatal. Certainly you will not be able to concentrate. I need you awake and aware for this next bit, so perhaps we should delay your punishment until after you have stared your failure in the face. That way, your pain can be more bitter, because more futile. You will see, it was all for nothing anyway." And Bruce heard the doors swoosh open on the carpet, heard the heavy weight being dragged forward. The weight was struggling. 

"Get your goddamn hands off me," said the weight, and Bruce's chest collapsed, his insides turned in on themselves, his limbs shook with it. His knees buckled again, but the attendants held him fast. They threw Dick on the carpet before the desk. Bruce tried to speak, tried to swallow air. For some reason there was no air. There was no air because Ra's had moved those fingers to his throat.

"Shall it be this way, then?" asked Ra's, gently. "Shall I choke off your breath, so that you never have air for another word to him, to either of them? How bitter it must be, to have wished so long for one more chance to speak to him, and now at the very moment your wish is granted, your breath is taken away. No, then," said Ra's and released him. Bruce heard no sound but the suck of his lungs for air, but then he heard "Bruce, _Bruce_ ," in that voice, in Dick's voice. A rough hand seized him by the neck and lifted him, turned him.

"Let the prisoner look," said Ra's pleasantly. "Look at how he has destroyed himself for your sake. I have watched his progress this year closely, and with interest. Shall we tell him, this filthy son of trash whom you preferred above all others, shall we tell him how you have spent your time this past year? Ah, we shall not. I am sure he can see it written on your face, in your sad broken body. Gag him. Gag the both of them."

The cloth was over his mouth before he could say a word. It didn't matter, he could only see Dick. Thinner, but whole. Alive. Every part of him, alive. Dick's eyes were on him, too, and in all the room there were only his eyes and Dick's, trying desperately to say everything that could not now be said. _Dick, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry_ , and he saw his mistakes, all of them, in a blinding series of flashes: how his own demented grief had kept him from seeing the truth of what must have happened in that fire, what Damian must have done, how he had failed Dick yet again, failed Damian yet again, failed all of them. I'm sorry, he said with his eyes, but Dick's eyes above the gag were only wild. Would they kill Dick first, make him watch? How many dead sons must he hold, before life was done with him?

Ra's was caressing his hair now. "I could let you live," he said. "I could let the both of you live. Throw you into one of my dungeons, together. Would you like that? To live out the rest of your days, in the darkness, together? My Lear and my Cordelia, facing the travails of prison with strength because at last you are united? Shall you make of one little room an everywhere, and shall I amuse myself, watching you live out your sad, stunted lives? Perhaps." The hand rubbed gentle circles in his hair.

"Ah, Bruce. I know what it is to lose a son. Did I not lose one too, once? Did I not have a son, the strongest, the cleverest, the most passionate I had ever known? And did he not turn my own weapons against me, to tear the heart from my body?" Ra's slid his hand lower, too low. It cupped his groin. "But perhaps son is the wrong word. I would have taken you in that other way, too, long ago. You are no stranger to the love between warriors, are you. Tell me, do I shame you before these boys, or do they know your secret lusts?" 

Bruce's eyes were level and untouched, by anything Ra's did or said. Dick lived, and Damian had heard him, and there was nothing anyone could do to hurt him now. _You are far from my body, and my soul you have never seen_ , his eyes said to Ra's, and he knew Ra's heard it, and hated him. 

Ra's took the little scimitar, ran it down one cheek until Bruce dripped blood. He did not flinch. The point rested against Bruce's neck. Behind him, Dick was thrashing like a lassoed tiger, his throat snarling, legs twisting. _Stop, it's all right, I don't mind_ , Bruce willed in his direction. The movement of the knife was so swift that the hot spill of blood was faster than the explosion of pain at his throat. He felt the tidal wave of red coating him, heard the guttural animal scream from Dick's gagged throat, heard Damian crying _Grandfather, Grandfather_. 

_Clark Clark Clark, I'm sorry_. The black came very quick, and he swam toward it.

* * *

He was suspended in pain like a sea of knives. 

He catalogued before he opened his eyes, assembling as much information as possible. There was a smell of dryness and mustiness. He inhaled deeply to learn more of it, ignoring the lance of pain in his lungs. That puzzled him: how could his ribs be broken? He didn't remember that. He pushed past the pain, ignored it.

His brain reconstructed the last bits of memory. He was not dead, unless he had been hugely mistaken, and this was what death was. The quality of the pain did make him wonder, though. There was a hand on his forehead, stroking him. "I think he's coming around," said the voice, but it was a voice from another lifetime ago. "Hand me that cup."

At the flat metallic smell of the water, his insides came live, and he was aware of an overpowering, tremendous thirst, like nothing he had ever known. He could barely move his limbs—they jerked when he would have moved them, but the voice said, "Shhh," and lifted the cup to his mouth. Wooden, the edges rough. But the water was clear and cold, despite the aftertaste of metal. Deep wellwater then. He swallowed it down like an animal. The cup kept going away. He couldn't discover why.

"Why is he shaking like that, what's wrong, is he okay," said another voice, and he knew that one too, oh he knew it. He opened his mouth to say the name. His mouth wouldn't work. His eyes wouldn't work. He wanted to open them and could not. Fear like he had not felt in many years came flooding into him. He could not stop the shaking. They were wrapping him in something, trying to hold him down. No, they could not hold him, he had to find Damian, had to find Dick. 

"It's all right," said Dick. Soothing hands were stroking him through wraps, blankets of some sort, strong arms holding him as he writhed. His cheeks were wet. "Shh, shh, it's like that," Dick was saying. "It will pass, it did for me, you'll be all right."

The spasms subsided, leaving him drained. His head fell onto a shoulder that cradled him. The hand was stroking his hair again. "I'm here now, its all right," said Dick, and Bruce tried to stay awake but could not. The blackness was too strong, and he belonged to it. "Sorry," he managed through a cracked throat, and was lost again.

* * *

The next time he woke, things were sharper. There was no pain, this time. In fact, there was an extraordinary amount of not pain. 

He opened his eyes and saw blank sandstone walls, several cots, a surprising amount of sunlight. Buckets on the floor. Bruce licked his lips. Still dry, but the wrenching thirst had gone.

He moved his hands to his throat. There would be stitches. He ought to feel searing pain from the wound. And yet, that didn't seem right. That hadn't been a wound—that had been a clean slice of his trachea, that had been enough to sever bone. He couldn't be remembering right. And now. . . nothing. There was nothing on his throat, no mark at all. The whole thing hadn't happened, it had all been a hallucination of some sort. He tried to remember—the tea? Had that been it? It must have been the tea, he should have been more careful. 

He shut his eyes. If it had been a hallucination, then there had been no Dick. That had been the product of his delirious brain. "Definitely awake," said the impossible voice, with a smile in it, and Dick loomed over him. Bearded, too thin, too. . . well, probably not unlike what he looked like. He reached a hand for him and discovered his weakness falling away from him. He sat up, swung his legs over. 

"My bag," he croaked. "Where are my things."

"Hey, take it easy, you've had kind of a day. Don't worry about your things, I'm sure the concierge will get to it." There was a hand on his back, steadying him.

"How long," he said. The rough crack of his voice alarmed him. If it had been as long as that. . . 

"Twelve hours, give or take," said Dick. 

Twelve since then, and another hour he had spent in the ascent to reach Ra's Al Ghul's citadel. It was not too long, then. But only if they had done what he had calculated they would do. He reached a tentative hand to his body. He was wearing a clean white shift of some sort. The linen was fresh, but soaked in his sweat. And then he touched his own chest, knowing before he explored what he would find, which was nothing. No scars. None at all. A perfect, unmarked body. 

Every piece fit into place with a satisfying, terrifying _snick_. "The Lazarus pit," he whispered. Dick nodded. 

"It's kind of a rocky re-entry, you might want to lie back for a bit more." 

There were quick footsteps on the flagstoned hallway, and the creak of the prison door. "I'll only be a moment," said Damian, to someone outside the door. It shut behind him. He stood there, looking at both of them.

"Father," he said, awkwardly. Only a boy, after all. "You look. . . well." He was fidgeting with his hands. Bruce took stock of him. Training silks and leathers. Taller than a year ago, and shadows around those eyes that Bruce suspected would always be there.

"You didn't need to come," Damian said. "I would have made sure Dick was released. Grandfather would have released him soon, anyway. We just needed to be sure he wasn't a danger, to himself or others. It's. . . the amount of time that elapses between, before you enter, it. . . makes a difference to recovery time. How are you feeling?"

"Remarkably well," said Bruce. "Why am I alive?"

"You'll have to ask Grandfather that. I don't know. I think—he has this idea, I think. The two of you, carrying on forever, something like that. Like gods. Who knows, I don't know half of what's in his head. He didn't do it because of anything I said. I knew nothing I said would make a difference." He glanced at the door. "I have to go now. I won't be allowed long this time. I just wanted to say. . . you didn't need to come. Everything you said, upstairs. I already knew that. I knew it. I—" His fists were clenching and unclenching rapidly. "I didn't know what else to do."

And then Bruce did what he had waited to do all year, all his life, and silently opened his arms, because he did not trust himself yet to walk. Damian gave a noise like a choked sob and half-stumbled, half-fell into his father's arms. Damian was saying things, but Bruce did not hear them. He was rearranging his belief in a personal God, that such a thing could be, that he could hold Damian in his arms again, with Dick beside him. If a scimitar to the carotid artery was the price of that, then he would gladly pay up, every day of his life. 

"I didn't know what else to," Damian murmured. "I did the only thing I knew to make things right."

"Yeah, I know," Dick said wearily, and Bruce got the feeling this was not the first time the two of them had had this conversation, at least. Damian was pushing himself up now, up and out of Bruce's arms. He rubbed a hand across his face.

"I have to go," he said, and the voice was remote again. "I won't be allowed to come here again."

"Damian, listen to me. You don't have to stay here, you don't have to do what—"

"I do," he interrupted. "I gave my word. That was the price. For Dick. If he would agree to put Dick into the Pit, that was the price. I gave my word I would stay with him, and I will."

"Damian. You are not bound to that word." 

"That's not what my father taught me."

Bruce struggled up, and the room spun. Dick's hand was grabbing his arm, supporting him. He put his hands on Damian's shoulders. "Leave with us. When Dick and I go, come with us."

"Well, I like to think I'm an optimist too," said Dick. "But unless you're hiding a utility belt and a shit-ton of grappling wire under there, I think we're staying here for a while."

"That depends," said Bruce.

"On what?"

"On what happened to my bag."

Damian shook his head. "I can't get your bag to you. It would be impossible, even if the whole thing hadn't been searched and emptied already. He burned everything. I'm sorry, I couldn't stop him."

"Burned it. Are you sure?"

"Sure that it's been destroyed."

Bruce thought. Twelve hours since the events in that study. Twelve hours since he had died. Probably much fewer since the destruction of his bag. Ra's would have searched it thoroughly. He studied the high narrow walls of their prison, the barred windows. "How many guards at the door," he asked.

"Two, with an alternate in the hallway."

"Timeframe?"

"The alternate appears in forty-second intervals."

"Plenty of time, then. Need any help?"

Damian scoffed. "I wouldn't need _help_ to take down those two. But what good will it do? There isn't anywhere for you to go."

"Not yet," he admitted. "But I give it another hour at most."

"Bruce," Dick said. "I've spent a year of my life in this room. I've actually done what you're planning to do, some seven or eight times. Taking down the guards at the door isn't the issue. It's the 600 ninjas upstairs that's the problem. Even you can't get through those."

"Maybe not," said Bruce. "But I have something you didn't have."

"A delusional ability to escape from mountaintop fortresses wearing only a nightgown?" 

"A tracking device on my bag, slipped into the lining by an overprotective superhero best friend in what I'm sure he thought very secretive behavior. I took it apart and rewired it in Vientiane, set it to alarm on destruction. Burning ought to do the trick, I think." 

Bruce checked what he could see of the sun's position through the windows, calculating. "And in all honesty," he said, "I prefer to think of it as a tunic."


	4. For This My Son Was Dead, And Is Alive Again

"It's beautiful," said Wally's voice beside him, and Dick grinned. It was just the little boy tone of wonder in it, the way Wally sounded eleven. Another glorious explosion of greens and blues this time, tinged with yellow as the ashes fell, and in the suddenly bright light Dick could see Wally's eyes widen. And then he could see the quirk of mischief.

"Not that this isn't awesome and all," Wally said. "But it just seems kind of balls-out to set off fireworks over top of your house after it's already burned down what, like twice now?" Another gorgeous fireball cascaded multicolored sparks onto the lawn and white tents below, and the crowd of guests at Wayne Manor's Fourth of July party clapped at that one. The _oohs_ and _aahs_ of the assembled partygoers drifted up to Wally and Dick, where they lay stretched on the roof. It was an unbeatable seat for the best fireworks in Gotham, if you didn't mind flicking smoldering ash off yourself every so often. 

"I think it was Bruce's little fuck-you to the universe," Dick said, folding his hands behind his head. It had also been, he knew, as good a way as any to celebrate Richard Grayson's miraculous return from death and Wayne Manor's rebuilding, with all of Gotham society as witness. _Staying dead might have its advantages_ , he had mused aloud to Bruce. But finally he had known he couldn't walk that path of the shadow life, the path that Jason walked. 

His monument had been unceremoniously removed from the Wayne plot last week, and busted up for gravel in the back gardens. "I don't get to keep it?" he had asked, and Bruce had given him a look. "Okay, fine, I guess you did pay for it," he had said at last. He hadn't said anything about what was written on it. 

He had spent the night at the Manor last night, because it was, after all, a party nominally in his honor, and helping Alfred set up seemed like the right thing to do. He had been prowling the house around midnight, thinking he might put himself to sleep with a nightcap, but the downstairs liquor cabinet had been completely empty. He had gone to look for some in the pantry, and found that empty too. And then, most terrifyingly, he had gone to the wine cellar, thinking maybe Alfred had stashed the goods in there, and he had stood there in shocked silence at the empty row upon row of wooden shelves. He had flicked the light off, stunned. 

"Alfred," he said the next morning. "What the hell happened."

Alfred had set down his cup of tea. "Hell happened," he said succinctly. "I believe Master Bruce takes no chances now, of hell ever happening again. Of that sort, anyway."

Dick had nodded. He had heard enough, from stray remarks, to have put together the picture of what had happened in the year he had been. . . away. Bruce wouldn't talk about it with him, wouldn't so much as acknowledge it. The weight of the unacknowledged: a Wayne family tradition. One day the roof would collapse with it. 

"All right, enough hiding up here," Dick yawned. "'d I ever tell you that, how I would hide out up here on the roof for parties, when I was little? Back when I was too young for them, and Bruce would send me to bed. I would sneak out onto the roof and watch from up here, if they were out on the lawns. Every so often I would get lucky, and someone would decide it was time for skinny-dipping in the pool."

"Oh yeah?" Wally looked interested now, and he cast a hopeful glance below. "That where you saw your first naked chicks?"

"Hell no, I grew up in a circus, you think anyone wears clothes backstage?" Dick was up with a stretch and a curl, and slapped his friend's shoulder. "C'mon, time to go make nice with all the guests." 

Wally groaned, but Dick slid effortlessly from cornice to drainpipe, landing with a graceful thud in a dark patch of lawn below. He called a few greetings to people, mainly Gotham acquaintances, shook some hands, enjoyed the spectacle still blazing overhead. There weren't that many Justice Leaguers in attendance, mainly because they tended to stand out in a crowd, so Bruce usually invited only those who could "pass" — Clark and Diana, of course, Ollie and Dinah, Wally on a good day. J'onn was here, morphed into a solemn-faced guy over by the buffet table, who somehow still managed to look completely alien; he was talking to M'gann, who looked like she had been born on the North Shore, she was so in her element. Her dress was low-cut in the back, showing every bit of the shape of her delicious backside, and no, it didn't help at all to know the backside was a morphed illusion of her actual body; it was still hot as hell. Conner was standing on her other side, and he gave Dick a smile. The arm he placed around M'gann's waist could have been affectionate, or it could have been a gentle reminder to Dick that his thoughts were transparent, so Dick grinned back and moved on.

Clark and Diana were in a huddle over by the dance floor, talking intently about something, but Diana caught his eye and lifted her champagne glass. He smiled back. For a half-second an idea crossed his mind: _I'm back from the dead, Diana, so. . . how about a little celebratory action?_ He had had more than one youthful fantasy about getting tied up with that lasso while unspeakable, delicious acts were done to him, and he wouldn't mind seeing some of those come true. But that was probably a no go, and even if it wasn't, Bruce would kill him—or Clark would. What exactly the relationship between the three of them was, he never had pinned down.

What the hell was wrong with him, that sex was all he could think about, these days? He hadn't thought about it at all in Ra's Al Ghul's prison; there, he had been focused on survival. Was it an effect of the Lazarus Pit, or just a year's deprivation? _Hi guys, back from the dead, now will someone for the love of God please bone me senseless?_

A low three-tone whistle had him whipped around, staring at the trees. It had been a long while since he had heard that signal, but it was unmistakable. He moved under the shadow of the trees, peering into the branches. He caught the movement he was no doubt meant to, and vaulted into the lower branches, where a strong arm grabbed his collar and hauled him higher. 

"Welcome back, Dickie Bird," said Jason with a leer. He was crouched on a branch, swathed in shadow, but he wasn't wearing the mask. 

"Jason," he said. He knew he was supposed to be angry with Jason—remembered being furious with him. But the old anger was hard to locate now. "Any chance we could do this someplace more comfortable?"

"What's the matter, lost your touch? A little out of shape, are we?"

"Fuck off," Dick said, but it was amiable. For answer he reached up to a high branch and swung up and over, landing behind Jason on his branch. A year locked in a cell, and he was stronger, faster, more agile than before—that was just the truth, though he hadn't confronted it, or tested his new limits. Jason's wry smile looked like he knew it, too.

"It's an exclusive club we're in, Dickie Bird. Thought you might want to talk to a founding member."

"You're a thoughtful guy."

"Yeah, I'm the best."

"Well, thanks and all, but I'm fine. Everything's normal, I haven't grown extra appendages, I don't speak in strange languages, and my head still only rotates 180 degrees. Even weirder, I don't suddenly want to start gunning down criminals or decapitating thugs, and I've been back a whole month and I still don't feel the need to pervert the entire U.S. justice system by turning myself into judge, jury and executioner of anyone I think deserves it. So, whatever it was like for you, it's been fine for me."

"That so," said Jason, and moved closer. Dick was crouched beside him, feet on the branch, arms holding the one above, and he didn't recognize his vulnerability until Jason had found it, and palmed his crotch. 

"Jason," he said, in what was meant to be his big-brother, let's-be-reasonable, I'm-not-kidding-around-here voice, but came out distressingly closer to a groan. 

"Hush," said Jason. "Can't make noise up here," he said, like that was the problem with this. "Put your legs down," he said, like he could just give orders.

But somehow Dick obeyed. Jason had unzipped him, Jason had tugged his glove off with his teeth, Jason had a hand on his cock. Dick bucked and hissed air. "It's like that," Jason said conversationally. "For a while afterward. You can't get enough."

"Jason, _stop_ ," he managed. He was up in a tree, and his engorged cock was bobbing in the air, and Jason was fisting him. Nothing had ever felt so good. He needed to weep with it. 

"Yeah, you're gonna come fast, aren't you. Aim for that grass below there. I wanna see your come splatter the lawn, come on."

"Fuck, Jason, what the hell are you doing," he gasped, but that was the end of speech, and his orgasm was tearing out of him in long heavy spurts. Jason was grinning. 

"You're gonna be needing a lot of that," he said, sliding his glove back on. There was a stray smear of come on his wrist, and he wiped it on his jeans. "Catch you later, Dickie Bird," he whispered, and his mouth was right against Dick's ear, their faces brushing for an instant in a gesture that might have been loverlike if it hadn't felt so goddamned full of _menace_. 

He heard Jason drop to the ground and evaporate into the night. His hands hurt, and he didn't know why until he looked at them: he had been gripping the branch so hard the bark had gouged his palms.

His life had been so uncomplicated, before he died.

* * *

It wasn't as though Clark had thought the party's absent host would be difficult to find. 

"You brood any more loudly, and you'll disturb your guests," he said, coming down the tunnel stairs to the cave. Bruce didn't turn from the monitors. "Seems a shame to pay for such a good party and enjoy none of it."

"I'm sure I'll be able to read about it tomorrow." He was intent on something on the smallest screen near him; the rest were feeds from the League's various monitor stations. Bruce's eyeglasses were tossed on the console beside him. Usually he wore them when concentrating on something for a long period of time.

Clark leaned against the med table. He wasn't sure when, exactly, Bruce had begun to rebuild; probably it had been before he left to get clean. The reconstruction upstairs was flawless. The cave would take longer, because this would have to be done by hand. There were still black tarps slung over pieces of equipment parked haphazardly in dark corners, and odd bits of cable scattered about. The lighting was a few metal drop-lights, and their harsh, narrow light showed charred walls and crumbled rock. But the first bank of new monitors was up, and Bruce sitting in the midst of the rubble staring at those screens made everything seem normal again.

"So this is why you haven't been to the Watchtower lately," Clark said. 

"Been a little busy."

"I see." He looked in the corner, where a particularly large, long black case was propped against the wall. It would be just the size for a batsuit. _It will take him years to rebuild_ , Diana had said, and Clark had laughed. _I give it six weeks_. "I could help, you know."

"I've got it covered." Bruce looked up then, like he had just remembered something. "But. . . thanks."

Clark's smile was grim. "Don't strain something there." 

Bruce's grunt probably meant _please shut up while I'm reading this_ , but Clark chose to take it as a sign of encouragement. "You know, your chair is waiting for you. If Batman ever wanted to sit in it again, that is."

Bruce paused in his typing, but only momentarily. Clark pretended that meant _we'll see_. 

"There are some new members of the League you might want to meet. I could send you an updated roster if you like, just to look over. I have some ideas on how best to divide their duties, and what partners might be suitable for them, but I'd love your input, if you had the time." 

Bruce was silent. "Right," Clark said. "Well, I'll just be on my way then. I've been trying to get you to talk to me for a solid month, ever since we got back from Ra's Al Ghul's, which by the way, you're welcome for that—if you're looking to turn over a new leaf and start saying thank you to things, maybe you should start with rescue from certain death, but that's probably just me. So I think I'm done with _which Bruce Wayne am I talking to today_ , fun as this has been. I know the way out." 

And he was at the tunnel entrance—still Bruce was silent, what a motherfucker he really was, when all was said and done—when something stopped him in his tracks, something said _stop_ and _look_ and _not right_. He couldn't figure what it was, and then his conscious brain saw what his unconscious brain had registered five minutes ago.

He walked back to where Bruce sat, and held out his hand. "Arm," he said. Bruce didn't move, so he yanked his arm and extended it. That he had never done before—used his strength on Bruce against his will. But Bruce said nothing. Clark looked with his x-ray vision, but consciously this time. Half the time when Bruce said "stop that," Clark wasn't even aware he had been scanning; it was just something instinctive, not something he was really in control of. He used x-ray on things all the time, most often not even knowing he was doing it, and it was an old habit to use it on Bruce—checking for hairline fractures after a hard night's patrol, scanning for internal injuries Bruce might be ignoring or minimizing. 

"Your arm," he said, after a minute. "You broke it three years ago. Snapped your ulna right in two. There's no sign of bone knitting now, not the smallest trace."

Bruce was looking at the floor. Clark pushed back the long sleeves he was wearing, slowly. The old scar that had gone up the inside of his arm was gone. "So that's it," he said, slowly. "That's why you want nothing to do with me. Because I'll recognize what happened to you." Bruce said nothing, but when he pulled his arm back Clark didn't try to restrain him. Bruce rolled his sleeve back down. 

"Go back to the party," he said hoarsely.

"Bruce," and Clark knelt in front of him. "What did he do to you? Are you. . . are you Bruce?"

That got him a quick startled glance. "Of course I am. You think—" he broke off and rubbed quickly at his forehead. "Actually, that's a far more rational explanation than the reality. A clone of me would have all my genetic material, but obviously none of my body's flaws. A clone grown in four weeks is not, as far as we know, possible. Even Cadmus's work was never able to move faster than sixteen. Still, it's far more credible than the reality."

The full extent of that reality hit Clark in the chest. Ra's Al Ghul. Ra's Al Ghul, who had brought Jason from the dead. Ra's Al Ghul, who possessed the Lazarus Pit. Ra's Al Ghul, who had brought Dick from the dead. Why did it never occur to him that he might have done the same to Bruce?

"He killed you," Clark said, rocking back on his heels. "I told you he would."

That got him his first smile, half-assed and wry though it was. "Yes, congratulations, Clark, you were right. Feel better?"

"How?"

Bruce looked surprised at that one. "Why would you want to know that?"

"Because I do. Tell me how he did it."

"He sliced my throat." Clark saw, in the small spasm of muscle in Bruce's face, the weight of those four words. There would have been so much blood, so much pain and terror. _Ra's Al Ghul_ , he thought. _I am coming for you. Your mistake has been profound._

"He must have had me in the pit within the hour," Bruce was saying. "I've been trying to figure out his reasoning, and on the surface of it the obvious explanation seems to be that he wished to keep me imprisoned for eternity—or his eternity, anyway. He could have meant to torture me by extending my punishment."

"But you don't think he did."

"I'm not. . . sure. Something Damian said makes me think not."

"So, your body, are you—just rejuvenated, or. . ."

"Immortal?" Bruce made a face. "I have no idea. It could be Ra's doesn't even know. I can't really come up with any empirical tests I'm willing to undergo. I do know my body is stronger than it was before, my strength heightened. My senses, too. All of them. Nothing beyond the extremes of human range, but probably just at the edge of it. The experience is. . . extraordinary."

"And you don't think he did it to prolong the tortures he had planned."

"No. Neither did Damian, and I trust his sense of Ra's, maybe more than mine. I think Ra's may want. . ." He squinted, looked into the corner of the cave. "An opponent, maybe. An equal. Someone to vie with. Who knows. He is, at heart, a sorcerer, and all sorcery is inscrutable."

"Inscrutable, but not invincible. I leveled his house once, and I can do it again."

"No," Bruce said sharply. "You can't. You took him by surprise, and it was enough to get us out, but it won't happen again. Ra's doesn't get surprised twice. He'll be looking for you now, aware of you. Clark. Listen to me. All your strength is no use against Ra's, against that kind of magic. He will take your strength and use it against you. There's no one more dangerous for you to face."

"Etrigan—"

"Is a demon, not a sorcerer. He's the sort of spirit people like Ra's and Morgana command. He's knowledgeable, and a good resource, but he has no real power against them in the end. Clark. Stay away from Ra's."

"What if we don't have that option? What if he comes for us, and Damian can't stop him?" _Assuming he even wants to_ , Clark considered adding, but he wouldn't share his ambivalence about the boy, not when Bruce was so convinced of his loyalty.

The mention of his son's name darkened Bruce's face, and he turned back to his screen instead of answering the question. "Ra's will have moved his base of operations," he said. "But I have an algorithm here to try and figure where his next fortress will be located. There are only a certain number of spots it could be, and by a certain number I mean 438. I've been trying to narrow that down. If I could locate Damian—"

"Bruce." Clark dared a hand on Bruce's shoulder. Involuntarily his thumb felt for the rippled half-moon scar beneath the shirt, and found none. "We will find him. Damian will come back."

"When Ra's is done with him," said Bruce. 

"Damian is just a way to get at you, a way to torture you. He won't hurt Damian."

Bruce gave a bitter snort at that. "You don't know. Ra's poisons everything he touches."

"But not your boy." Clark put a hand on both shoulders now, spun Bruce to him. "Not Damian. There is too much good in him, too much of you in him." 

Bruce looked at him with his best _if I had a week_ face. "Good," he said, like it was a filthy word. "You think I'm good. I've managed to alienate anyone who's ever cared about me. I've lost my house, my sanity, and, one way or another, all of my four sons. I've been cruel, foolish, and self-destructive, and I've been a constant danger to myself and others. If you still think I'm good, you really haven't been paying attention."

"Comma," Clark said, and Bruce's eyebrows shot up.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There was a comma there. Between 'good' and 'you.' I know they're not the same thing. I know exactly how far they overlap, and how far they don't. And I know that if I ever had to choose between the good, and you, I would choose you." He rose then, and he used his arms on Bruce to pull him up with him. 

"I have no idea why that is," Bruce said.

"Sure you do," said Clark, because Bruce never had an answer to that one. "So. Heightened sensory awareness." He placed a hand on Bruce's waist.

"Stop."

Clark let the hand fall. "All right," he said. "Okay. So, that's it, then? You're done with that part of us?"

"Yes."

It felt like that slice to Bruce's throat must have, just as hot and fierce and stabbing. Why had he expected anything different? He must have known. "You understand my confusion," Clark said carefully. "At my office, you said. . ."

"I said what was true. But what I said before, what I did, that can't be erased by _I'm sorry_. And I'm not so presumptuous as to try."

"Ah," said Clark. "Got it. Better not even try then. Better to live our whole lives—which now looks to be, what do you know, quite a long time—wanting something we can't ever have again."

"I destroyed that," Bruce said angrily. "You can't hit a reset button. It doesn't work like that." 

"And what if it did?"

"Then. . ." Bruce's face twitched in a frown. "I wouldn't. . . I. . ." He swayed, tipped forward, and he was in Clark's arms, his head against Clark's neck. "I'm just tired," he whispered. 

"Then let me in. Let me help. Let me." Against his shoulder, Bruce nodded, and Clark clutched him tighter. Nothing had ever felt sweeter, no awkward embrace had ever wrung him, dismantled him, aroused him more. "We will find him," Clark said. "I swear it. We will. Together. We will bring him home. I promise you, we will."

He felt the shudder of breath in Bruce, felt the moment when his muscles relaxed and he let Clark hold him. At the cave's shrouded entrance, Clark's eyes met Dick's, where he rested in the shadows, watching. Even Clark wasn't sure how long he'd been there, but he made no move to interrupt. His face was grave. 

_I promise you too_ , Clark said with his eyes, and in the dark unspeaking silence, they made a pact, the two of them. They would bring Damian back. They would face Ra's with Bruce, whether he wanted them to or not. And they would protect Bruce—from Ra's, from Damian, and most of all and forever, from himself. A quiet, eternal conspiracy. Bruce's hand gripped his arm.

"Let's get busy, then," said Bruce, his voice a low gravel against Clark's shoulder. "You always act like we've got all the time in the world."


End file.
